Youth riots in Sydney: the real story

If you are concerned about the Youth riots in Sydney: the real story is that, according to Peter Perkins (a long-time resident of Macquarie Fields),

There has been a very sharp hardening of the police stance in the area, a new-style paramilitary policing with coppers being bussed in in large numbers from outside.

This new approach began about two months ago, at the same time as it was taking place in other poor outer-Sydney working class suburbs like Claymore and Airds.

The first signs were raids on residents’ homes in the early hours of the morning. They stuck guns through windows and set police dogs on people. They’d cordon entire areas off for half a day at a time, using police in full paramilitary kit. So tensions had been building up.

All those cuts to services and to benefits come at a cost.

I know of very few young people who have permanent jobs in the area. Probably half the kids drop out of school at 15. The tightening of social welfare payments in this high unemployment area drives many people to rely on petty crime for an income.

Many young people here don’t see it as morally wrong to steal from those who have more than them in order to survive. They simply have no real alternative.

Some steal cars simply to get around because there is no public transport after 8pm and very limited services on Sundays.

And of course, they are simply people living on valuable real estate.

Public housing is run down and there is a $650 million dollar backlog on repairs and maintenance for the public housing, according to the papers today. The Carr government is running it down as an excuse to bulldoze more public housing and sell the land to private developers. It is the same as in Redfern.

My previous rant on this subject is at:

• Car thieves, not police, to blame for chase death